May 1998 - St Peter's Church, Berkhamsted, Herts

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MALCOLM JONES & METCALFE Funeral Service 284 High Street, Berkhamsted Day and Night Service Phone or Fax 864548 or 864943 the greatest living novelist was Mrs Humphry Ward. Mind you, by that time Funeral Directors Private Car Park Memorials Supplied Private Chapels of Rest ELIZABETH TORY MSSCh MBChA Qualified Surgical Chiropodist VISITING PRACTICE For appointments please ring 82 3364 6
Dickens and Thackeray were both dead; even so it is a startling statement. Mrs Ward lived in the village of Aldbury, in the big house called Stocks which is now a country club, and she became a very popular novelist in the last part of Victoria’s reign. Robert Elsmere was said to be her best novel, but I have to confess to not having read it, nor any other of her books for that matter. I doubt if you would find any in print today. But she was much more than a writer; she was a formidable Victorian lady with a strong personality, holding views and exerting great influence in all her particular fields of interest. She was the niece of Dr Arnold and the cousin of Matthew Arnold. At Stocks she entertained people like George Bernard Shaw, Henry James, Lewis Carol and her nephews Aldous and Julian Huxley. She was a philanthropist both locally and in London. I don’t know how she would have got on with today’s feminist writers: the contrast between her and them could not be greater in many respects. For one thing she was violently antisuffragette; and far from continuing to use her maiden name as many women writers do after marriage, she insisted on being called by her husband’s Christian name as well as his surname: always Mrs Humphry Ward. Like another Aldbury lady whom I wrote about last month, Ruth Lady Crauford, she was buried in Aldbury churchyard. At her funeral Dean Inge described her as ‘perhaps the greatest Englishwoman of our time’. Mary Grieve Probably, though, the influence that the late Mary Grieve had in her day reached Pubs in the High Street, with the re-opened Crown on the left. into more homes than any of our local writers ever did. As editor for 23 years of the magazine Woman she built up the world’s biggest women’s weekly, raising its regular circulation to a staggering 3¼ million copies. It was printed by Odhams, so indirectly she must have been responsible for lots of local jobs. There was a full obituary in the Times following her death in February, and at her funeral in St Peter’s June Douglas spoke of Mary’s Scottish roots, her strength and her stability. For the last 20 years Mary had settled in Berkhamsted, and while her health allowed was a regular member of St Peter’s congregation. Bookshops With all these literary connections and the schools in and around Berkhamsted it is all the more surprising that a second-hand bookshop could not be made to pay here. In his letter in the March Review Jim Wilson, my next door neighbour who had a go at running one, tried to put his finger on the cause of this. It is a real disappointment, particularly as there are smaller towns one knows which have one, or even two. 7
Page 1 and 2: In this issue May 1998 Against debt
Page 3 and 4: eview leader Fr Robin Figg asks us
Page 5: impose today. The result was an agr
Page 9 and 10: David Northcott introduces the 1998
Page 11 and 12: eview letters Voluntary work - a pe
Page 13 and 14: Y ou may remember I wrote a month o
Page 15 and 16: In 1798 an ineffective uprising led
Page 17 and 18: T he borough council decided that n
Page 19 and 20: place of oppression. This Whitsun,
Page 21 and 22: MAY AT ASHRIDGE A spring plant fair
Page 23 and 24: BERKHAMSTED CASTLE W.I. Recently we
Page 25 and 26: eview services&activities SUNDAY St
Page 27 and 28: eview factfile SundaySchool Churche

May 1998 - St Peter's Church, Berkhamsted, Herts

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